While Ethereum (ETH) was once the dominant decentralized application (dApp) platform in the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem, things have seemingly started to change in the last few months, as new competing platforms have been stealing some of its market share.
Last year, at the end of a year-long initial coin offering (ICO) that raised $4 billion, Block.one launched EOS, which according to available data already has more users on its dApps than Ethereum. EOSBet, one of its most popular dApps, has even received an online gambling license.
The TRON platform also saw its TRX token move from the Ethereum blockchain to its own last year. Since then, the ecosystem has been growing rapidly and has even poached some of Ethereum’s developers. The TRON Foundation has, last year, acquired peer-to-peer pioneer BitTorrent for $140 million.
NEO, often referred to as “China’s Ethereum,” has also seen various developments. Its NEO Name Service (NNS) dApp registered over 10,000 .neo domains in its first month, and its first decentralized exchange (DEX) Switcheo has listed ERC-20 tokens.
These developments have seen Ethereum stop being the go-to smart contract platform for some, and they have affected its price. Although last year ETH dropped from a $1,400 high to a low of little over $80, it has since recovered, and is at press time trading at $122.9. In the last 6 months, it has dropped over 74%.
NEO, according to CryptoCompare data, went from a near $200 high to about $5.5 before it started recovering, and it’s currently trading at $7.6. In the last 6 months, it has lost 78.4% of its value.
A better performing token was EOS. Its high was of about $23 in April of last year, and even though it endured significant governance problems over the power its block producers (BPs) had over the accounts on its blockchain and over its centralization, it dropped 69.6% in the last six months. It’s currently trading at $2.46.
The best-performing smart contract platform was TRON. In the last six months, available data shows it dropped 32.3%. The cryptoasset has outperformed the competition thanks to its BitTorrent acquisition, as it’s now launching its BTT token on Binance’s launchpad, and will reward TRX users.
More recently, crypto exchange ABCC partnered with the TRON Foundation ahead of the niTROn Summit in San Francisco to become the first crypto exchange to list TRON’s native TRC-10 tokens.
According to DappRadar data, the top two most used dApps in the cryptocurrency ecosystem are on the EOS blockchain, while the number three and four are on TRON’s blockchain. Only one ETH dApp, My Crypto Heroes, appears to be on the top 10 by number of active users in the last 24 hours.
